SoftBank Group and Nvidia are in talks to lead a more than $1 billion investment at a $14 billion valuation in Skild AI, a software company building a foundational robotics model. Reuters reported this.
The nearly three-year-old startup was last valued at $4.7 billion in May when it raised $500 million in a round led by SoftBank along with participation from LG Technology Ventures, Samsung, Nvidia and others, according to data from PitchBook. Skild did not immediately respond to a request for comment. SoftBank and Nvidia declined to comment.
Unlike other heavily funded startups, Skild AI does not build its own hardware. Instead, it develops a basic robot-agnostic model that can be adapted for different types of robots and use cases.
The company unveiled its universal robot model Skild Brain in July with videos showing robots picking up plates and climbing up and down stairs. The company has formed strategic partnerships with LG CNS and Hewlett Packard Enterprise to develop its ecosystem.
Investor interest in AI robotics has been steadily growing. Physical Intelligence, another company that develops ‘brains’ for a wide range of robots, has done just that reportedly recently raised $600 million at a $5.6 billion valuation led by CapitalG. An investor who evaluated but declined to fund Physical Intelligence told TechCrunch that its model is still in the early stages of development.
In September, Figure, a company developing a humanoid robot, raised more than $1 billion at a massive valuation of $39 billion. Meanwhile, 1X, another developer of humanoid robots, was in talks to raise as much as $1 billion $10 billion valuationDe Informatie reported a few months ago.
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